Much to her relief, Pale and Virux did not encounter any further resistance as he led her through the halls of the Luminarium. That wasn't to imply that the fighting had ended – far from it, in fact; even now, Pale could still hear the telltale echo of steel against steel ringing out through the various rooms and halls, along with the occasional burst of magic or explosion that rocked the entire school.

It was no better outside, either – through a nearby window, Pale caught sight of spells being fired throughout the nearby city. The sight of it gave her pause.

"Virux," she said. "What happened here?"

Virux let out a grunt, then shook his head. "I have no idea. They came out of nowhere, as far as I can tell – they struck right as exams were beginning to really take off; we had no time to mount a proper defense. And moreover, this absolutely flies in the face of how combat is usually undertaken between the various territories."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it usually isn't this clandestine. Sure, there's the occasional cloak-and-dagger assassination of a high-ranking official, but an entire sneak attack like this?" Virux shook his head. "This is completely unheard of. It reminds me of an attack by a bandit tribe more than anything…"

Pale's eyes widened, the gears in her head beginning to turn as she put the pieces together. "Where is Sven?" she demanded. "Have you seen him?!"

Again, Virux shook his head. "No, I haven't seen him in several days."

"Do you remember what I told you about him at the start of the year?"

"Yeah, he-" Vrrux suddenly paused, a shocked expression crossing his face. "...What? You don't think-"

"I don't know what to think right now," Pale hastily added. "All I know at this point is we need to mount a counterattack and fend off whoever's doing this… and if possible, we need to find Sven and hopefully get some answers."

"Agreed on all counts," Virux said with a nod.

At that moment, the two of them rounded a corner, and Pale spotted Virux's office. The door was already open, and she could see a figure rifling through the various stacks of paperwork. Curiously, he didn't seem to care about any information he might have been able to glean from the papers. Rather, he seemed intent on finding something else instead.

Virux didn't give him a chance to accomplish whatever it was he was trying to do. The Dragonborn dashed forwards, spear at the ready, and thrust it straight through the cloaked man's back. The point of the spear erupted out the man's front, spattering Virux's office with blood; Virux, for his part, held onto the spear with one hand, and with his other, drew a knife from his belt and jabbed it into the side of the enemy's throat. Blood spurted out from his freshly-severed carotid artery; he was unconscious within seconds, and dead after just a few more.

Virux sheathed his knife, then yanked his spear out of the dead man's back. As Pale watched, he moved over to behind his own desk, then reached down to the floor, resting his palm against the stone. To her surprise, the stone suddenly shifted to glass, revealing a hollow cavity underneath the floor, in which her weapons had been placed. Virux shattered the glass, then reached into the hole and began to pull her weapons out.

"You're an Alteration mage…" Pale surmised, awestruck even as she moved over to him and began to take possession of her weapons.

Virux nodded. "Yes. I tried to keep it a secret, but these are desperate times."

"I… I thought I was the only one here…"

"Only one…? What do you-" Understanding suddenly dawned on Virux's face, and he stared at her in surprise. "...Tomas told me you'd finally unlocked your sjel, but I never would have thought…" He trailed off after a moment, then shook his head. "You and I will have much to discuss when this is all over. But for now, let's focus on routing the enemy before they can kill anyone else."

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Pale nodded as she readied her weapons, the room suddenly filling up with metallic clicks and clacks as she loaded up magazines and chambered rounds in everything. By the end of it, she had a complete kit and then some – her usual .45-caliber pistol was nestled in its spot on her hip, while her semi-auto shotgun was slung across her back. In her hands, she held the assault rifle that had gotten her through initiation. Ammunition-wise, she was carrying almost a full combat load for her pistol, plus about half a full load for her assault rifle, not to mention two full shell caddies for her shotgun, consisting of mostly buckshot with a few slugs mixed in.

All told, she was absolutely loaded for bear. With one final motion, Pale pulled back the bolt on her assault rifle, watching as it stripped a 6.8-millimeter round from the top of the magazine and fed it into the chamber without an issue. Once she was finished getting armed up, she turned towards Virux and gave him a nod.

"Let's get to work," she said.

XXX

Her and Virux came sprinting out of his office, Pale's rifle tucked into her shoulder as she swept the nearby hallways. Off in the distance, she saw several students come running around a corner, pursued shortly thereafter by three cloaked figures. She didn't hesitate; her rifle barked six times, the sound of the suppressed gunshots echoing through the halls, and the cloaked figures all stumbled and fell as the rounds tore into them two at a time. The three men fell to the ground and didn't move.

Pale motioned towards the panicked students, who had stopped a short ways away from Virux. "Watch them," she urged her professor as she closed in on the three freshly-killed corpses. Sure enough, none of them were breathing, but just to be sure, Pale shot each one an additional time in the head.

"Clear," she called out.

A moment later, Virux came running up behind her, the students hesitantly following after him as he did so. "Wow," he said, eyeing Pale's rifle as he closed in. "I didn't expect it to be so… brutally effective. Where did you say you got that, again?"

"Focus," Pale emphasized. She motioned to the students gathered around them once more. "Can you watch them?"

"Yes, I can."

"Good. I need to head back and find my friends. What I need from you is an assurance that you're okay to keep clearing rooms on your own and saving anyone who can be saved. Can you do that?"

Slowly, Virux nodded. "You have my word."

"Good." Pale was about to turn away when she suddenly thought of something and looked back over to him. "And if you see Sven… it's best if you don't engage him unless you have to. He's crippled, but still extremely dangerous."

"Understood," Virux replied. "Good luck to you, Pale."

"To you as well, Professor."

With that, the two of them split up, Virux heading one way and Pale heading the other. She was moving deeper into the Luminarium now, towards the epicenter of the fighting.

She could only hope that her friends were doing okay in her absence.

XXX

A short burst of suppressed gunfire tore through the air, and an enemy soldier fell, the top half of his head sheared off. The other soldiers, all of whom were standing over dead students and were holding bladed weapons, looked up towards where the noise had come from.

The last thing they ever saw was the muzzle flash from Pale's assault rifle as it spat hot lead in their direction.

Her weapon clicked empty for the first time just as the final enemy soldier fell, clutching at his stomach, screaming in agony from the bits of white-hot metal that had pierced his abdomen. Pale paid his cries no mind as she reloaded her weapon; at the end of the day, they were nothing more than the cries of a wounded animal caught in a trap.

"Talk," Pale said as she stood over him, her assault rifle leveled at his head.

The man sneered at her even through the obvious pain etched across his face. "Fuck you. Why would I-"

Pale's only response was to suddenly jab the end of her weapon's still-smoking suppressor directly into the man's forehead. He yowled in pain as the heat coming off the suppressor burned him; after a few seconds, Pale yanked the gun away from his head, leaving him there with tears of agony trailing down his face.

"Talk, or I drag this out and make them hurt even more," she said. "This is your only warning. You have exactly five seconds to tell me something useful."

The soldier tried to stare her down for a few seconds before realizing she wasn't bluffing. Finally, he let out a sigh. "I don't know any-"

"Time's up."

Pale angled her rifle downwards and fired off a round directly into his right kneecap, the high-velocity bullet nearly separating the lower part of his leg away from the rest. The man let out an agonized howl, which only grew in intensity as Pale again pressed her suppressor against his forehead.

"Do not make me ask again," she threatened.

Footsteps from behind her suddenly caught her attention, and Pale let out a muffled curse as she turned around. Four more cloaked figures were approaching, no doubt having been drawn in by their comrade's pained screeches. Pale, for her part, wasn't surprised by this; she thumbed her weapon's fire selector back to fully automatic, and laid on the trigger. Spent brass ejected out of her weapon with every shot, bouncing off the walls and floor as their payloads screamed downrange, impacting against flesh and bone. It was over in just a few seconds, the four men who'd come to investigate having been riddled with bullets in the blink of an eye.

With that done, Pale turned back towards her captive, her eyes narrowing dangerously. He stared back at her, but any trace of bravado was gone, having been replaced with sheer terror.

Without a word, Pale lifted her boot up and stomped on his bullet wounds, eliciting the expected cries of pain from him.

"Tell me something useful right now or I'll send you straight to whatever hell you believe in," she growled.

"Alright, alright!" the man managed to gasp out. "We were sent… by Duke Magnus!"

That gave Pale pause. She'd only heard of the Duke in passing – first at Stonebriar, and also in the past at the Luminarium – but she knew that he was Joel's father. Of course, while that answered one question, it raised so many others.

"Who put you up to this directly?" she demanded. "Because I know it wasn't the Duke himself; he's hundreds of miles away. So who was it?"

"I don't know!" the enemy soldier cried out. "Some bandit! He's the one who taught us to attack like this! I don't know his name or even what he looks like, I swear!"

"Then you're of no further use to me."

'Wait-"

That was as far as he got before Pale sent one final bullet directly through his skull. The round erupted out the back of his head, spewing blood, brains, and chunks of skull across the stone floor underneath him. The man's dead body fell against the ground, and Pale wasted no time in continuing on her way.

She'd confirmed one thing, now to find confirmation for the rest. Of course, that was going to be easier said than done, given she had no idea where to find Sven.

Another explosion rocked the Luminarium, and she grit her teeth as she ran.

There'd be time to worry about all that later, she figured. For now, she needed to regroup with her friends.

And so, she continued on her way, the whole time hoping they'd managed to hold out so far.